In praise of naivete

Two days ago, at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, guests of the president's conference Facing Tomorrow were shown a short film about Israel's scientific, technological and social achievements. I could sense unease. "A Jewish Agency film," snickered a well-known economist. And after all, seated in the auditorium were VIPs from all over the world, including foreign presidents. And Tony Blair. And if that weren't enough, even the host, Shimon Peres, ignored the international status of the event and used his speech to repeatedly praise Jewish intelligence and its contribution to the country and humanity.

Although the prime minister rescued the honor of the event and addressed the major issues - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, for example - at a certain point in the evening, when the discussion returned to the naive visions, the smiles, mine at least, were no longer smiles of embarrassment. The atmosphere made it possible to briefly escape problems we cannot solve in spite of - or perhaps because of - our exclusive preoccupation with them. Perhaps, I thought, our country really is beautiful as the film's creators presented it, rather than ugly, as we are shown on television every evening? And perhaps most of the people here are good and humane, rather than evil, cruel and corrupt, as the screaming headlines inform us every day?

Peres has stopped bearing the vision of the New Middle East. Over the past few years, his vision has been to prepare the country scientifically and technologically for the future. He has a tireless urge - and no other leader in science or politics compares - to spur others to become involved, on a national and international scale, in fields in which Israeli scientists, entrepreneurs and research institutes have an advantage. And as long as he focuses on that, his leadership is acceptable and even helpful. If he concentrates on the right areas, gets the right people involved and finds them the necessary public and private resources, this aspect of his leadership will be far more successful than the political aspect. If he succeeds in implementing even a small fraction of the conference's objectives, many people will lose their cynical smiles. And who knows, he may even be forgiven the sin of the Oslo disaster, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the fields of solar energy, water desalination and cultivating the desert, Israel definitely has advantages it must exploit to develop national projects. The National Water Carrier, the project engraved in our awareness, is two generations old. Peres' Facing Tomorrow conferences, and even more so, his initiatives, can certainly promote awareness of the need to renew national projects.

The time has come for us to use most of our human and economic resources on projects that depend more on us than on others. We must abandon the obsession with finding a solution "now" to a problem - even a very important one - which in the foreseeable future we will have to live with, without a solution, as years of attempting to solve it have proven. And until the problem is solved with time, and it probably will be, we would do better to channel our national energy into areas where we enjoy greater - or absolute - freedom of action.

We will of course continue to address the Iranian bomb, terror, the Goldstone Commission report and other global problems. But we must give them a proportionate, sane amount of attention, and we must not invest most of our national energies in them. If our decision makers are guided by our real needs, rather than those dictated by the headlines, even issues insoluble thus far may come closer to a solution.